GOVERNMENT: Victory for Alcoa

As relentlessly as Inspector Javert dogged Jean Valjean, the Justice
Department has dogged the steps of the Aluminum Co. of America.
When Alcoa was acquitted of monopoly charges in 1941, the trustbusters
appealed their case. Four years later, an appeals court found that Alcoa
had, indeed, been a monopoly before the war but it withheld judgment
on Alcoa's postwar status until all Government-owned aluminum plants
were disposed of.

In the five years since that decision, Alcoa's shrewd President Roy A.
Hunt has done the best he could to build up competition. Hunt made...